Enhancing Foster Care Program
Child welfare is at the heart of what government agencies work towards. Time and again various welfare schemes for children’s education, health and well-being are rolled out. Government agencies worldwide, at both the Federal and State level continuously strive to provide a healthy and secure growing environment to the responsible citizens of tomorrow. However, with increasing number of children in Foster care, it’s time for government agencies to rethink their care models.
The Unheard Story
Across the globe, each Federal agency has a governing body solely responsible for children’s care and well being such as Children’s Bureau in USA or Office of the Children’s Advocate in Jamaica. The common goal for these departments is to enhance the quality of services and life for the children of the nation. Despite all the efforts, there are a few process gaps which need to be bridged.
Let’s closely examine a formal foster care program. Irrespective of various cultures, a formal program comprises assessment and on-boarding of foster families, matching foster families with children’s needs, monitoring of placements, post placement support for children and foster families, reintegration and after care support.
Every process of the program requires constant and careful monitoring, and seamless collaboration. Every child needs to be treated as a special case so that the welfare agencies can deliver the best in his/her interest. However, in the current state, the child welfare case workers spend 60 to 70 percent of their work time on case-related activities, and approximately 20 to 35 percent of work time is spent on direct client contact or collateral contact.1 The above data presents a strong case for government agencies to strengthen their foster care system and adopt technology that can support and empower case workers and other stakeholders.
Let’s closely examine a formal foster care program. Irrespective of various cultures, a formal program comprises assessment and on-boarding of foster families, matching foster families with children’s needs, monitoring of placements, post placement support for children and foster families, reintegration and after care support.
Every process of the program requires constant and careful monitoring, and seamless collaboration. Every child needs to be treated as a special case so that the welfare agencies can deliver the best in his/her interest. However, in the current state, the child welfare case workers spend 60 to 70 percent of their work time on case-related activities, and approximately 20 to 35 percent of work time is spent on direct client contact or collateral contact.1 The above data presents a strong case for government agencies to strengthen their foster care system and adopt technology that can support and empower case workers and other stakeholders.
Fighting the Odds
When a child is adopted in foster care, the goal of the agency is to provide a permanent home to the child, securing his/her childhood. Hence, it’s a primer for agencies to frequently review their care plans and determine if the child is ready for reintegration or needs other alternative care. And, to address these needs government agencies are leveraging technology but, in the process face quite a few challenges:
Legacy systems
Agencies till date thrive on their legacy systems. And, the inherent limitations of these legacy systems is making it difficult for agencies to cope-up with increasing data volume and citizen expectations. Further, creating incessant pressure on case workers and other stakeholders to deal with such systems rather than cater to child’s needs.
Siloed information systems
It requires seamless information exchange across departments and systems to deliver the best care. However, in the current state, different states and counties have their own systems which may not allow for interoperability, resulting in siloed processes and low efficiency.
Low Collaboration
A case involves various stakeholders’ participation such as case workers, child welfare agencies, courts, schools and others. The technology solution should allow for seamless collaboration and information flow across employees in the backend to case workers on the field.
Delivering Better Care
In order to provide better care, caseworkers, supervisors, program plan managers and child serving agencies such as schools and courts are putting in their best efforts. Leveraging the right technology can support this endeavor by facilitating effective information management, and overcoming the current process holdups.
Case Management system based on BPM and ECM platforms offers flexible work environment, access to contextual information and real-time insights, fostering better welfare. With such system, you can create a unified case file for every child by capturing their data from disparate sources. The information is then made available to all the caseworkers, facilitating evident-based decision making. It empowers caseworkers on-the-go with real-time insights. Leverage dashboards and generate detailed reports comprising child’s history and track record in school, foster family or in other care.
Agencies can fulfill their objective of ensuring a brighter future for every child by gaining access to all the indispensable information pertaining to child’s background information, previous abuse cases (if any), and regulations involved.
Maintaining a comprehensive file for every child entails right placement and allows for continuous monitoring, fostering better care for children.
Newgen’s Child and Family Welfare Solution
A configurable Child and Family Welfare Solution can support government agencies towards their goal to offer better care through empowered case volunteers, informed foster parents and responsive department authorities.
The solution is built on Newgen’s Intelligent Business Process Management and Case Management framework. Leveraging case management capabilities, the solution streamlines processes such as investigation and assessment, person management, foster case management, staff management and others. The solution enables continuous process improvement by allowing users to monitor and re-engineer processes.
It empowers case workers with personalized dashboards, exception management capabilities and better decision making through seamless collaboration. The solution facilitates agencies to digitally transform their processes leveraging cutting-edge technologies and foster better care.
| Leading Child and Family Services department enhances citizens’ quality of life
The department aims to promote the best interest of children and families, enhancing their social functioning and quality of life. The Objective – The department needed to replace and modernize its case management system to facilitate effective service delivery, foster better child welfare and strengthen families. The Solution – Leveraging Newgen’s Child and Family Welfare solution, the department streamlined its Investigation, Permanency and Complaints Management workflows. The department transformed its processes and gained end-to-end process visibility, and easy accessibility to the secured information. The solution enabled effective request management by capturing requests from multi-channels and auto-routing of applications. The system facilitates the best placement for a child by providing detailed insights on the child’s case history through reports and dashboards. The Result – The department empowered its employees to become responsive knowledge workers. Freeing them from administrative work, offering contextual information and real-time insights, resulting in a better care delivery model. |
